Florian Grehl

Installation or Removal of VIB Packages in ESXi 7.0 fails with Error: Failed to query file system stats:

by Florian Grehl
November 27, 2021November 27, 2021

While installing ESXi updates, I noticed that on one of my hosts, the installation or removal of VIB packages fails with the following error message

# esxcli software vib install -d [package]
# esxcli software vib remove -n [package]
[InstallationError]
Failed to query file system stats: Errors:
Error getting data for filesystem on '/vmfs/volumes/59a83d9c-628c6ae0-7b35-f44d306ec05a': Cannot open volume: /vmfs/volumes/59a83d9c-628c6ae0-7b35-f44d306ec05a, skipping.
cause = Errors:
Error getting data for filesystem on '/vmfs/volumes/59a83d9c-628c6ae0-7b35-f44d306ec05a': Cannot open volume: /vmfs/volumes/59a83d9c-628c6ae0-7b35-f44d306ec05a, skipping.
Please refer to the log file for more details.

The device 59a83d9c-628c6ae0-7b35-f44d306ec05a was a non existing volume, referenced by a vffs mount. VFFS (Virtual Flash File System) was used in earlier ESXi releases by vSphere Flash Read Cache. I'm not sure where that comes from but this is how you can remove the stale mount:

First Steps with TKGm Guest Clusters in VMware Cloud Director 10.3

by Florian Grehl
November 21, 2021November 21, 2021
1 Comment

In the previous article, I've explained how to deploy Container Service Extension 3.1 with TKGm Support in VMware Cloud Director 10.3. In this article, I'm taking a look at how the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster is integrated into the Organization VDC and how the Tenant can access and work with the Kubernetes Cluster.

Deploy CSE 3.1 with TKGm Support in VMware Cloud Director 10.3

by Florian Grehl
November 18, 2021November 19, 2021
4 Comments

With the release of Cloud Director 10.3 and Container Service Extension 3.1 (CSE), you have an additional option to deploy Kubernetes Clusters: "Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Multi-Cloud" aka. TKGm. With TKGm you now have 4 options to offer Kubernetes as a Service for your customers.

TKGm (Multi-Cloud)
TKGs (vSphere with Tanzu)
Native
TKG-I (Enterprise PKS)

Yes, there is a reason why TKGm and TKGs are in bold letters. If you are starting today, forget about "Native" and "TKG-I". "TKGm" works similar to "Native" but is far superior. TKG-I (TKG Integrated Edition, formerly known as VMware Enterprise PKS) is deprecated as of CSE 3.1 and will be removed in future releases.

This article explains how to integrate CSE 3.1 in VMware Cloud Director 10.3.

Quick Tip: How to Master NSX-ALB (AVI) Resources in Terraform

by Florian Grehl
November 15, 2021November 15, 2021
1 Comment

Using the Terraform AVI Provider can be quite challenging because it required you to understand complex object definitions. All resources in the AVI Provider are mapped directly to the corresponding Avi Vantage API which you can find here. The problem is that some objects have a huge amount of attributes, some of them even have a nested depth of 5.

I'll show you a little trick to quickly get the required information to write NSX-ALB / AVI resources.

NSX-ALB Integration in VMware Cloud Director 10.3 with Terraform

by Florian Grehl
November 14, 2021November 15, 2021

In an earlier article, I've explained how to integrate VMware NSX-T Advanced Loadbalancer (formerly known as AVI) into VMware Cloud Director. Today, I want to show how to automate those steps with Terraform. Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as code software tool created by HashiCorp. The following steps are part of the automated configuration:

Create vCenter Content Library for SE Images
Create Service Engine Management Network with DHCP in NSX-T
Create NSX-T Cloud in NSX-ALB
Create Service Engine Group in NSX-ALB
Add NSX-ALB Controller to VMware Cloud Director
Import NSX-T Cloud to VMware Cloud Director
Import Service Engine Group to VMware Cloud Director

VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3 on Intel NUC

by Florian Grehl
November 11, 2021November 12, 2021
31 Comments

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 3 has been released in October and before you start to deploy it to production, you want to evaluate it in your testing environment or homelab. If you have Intel NUCs or similar hardware you should be very careful when updating to new ESXi releases as there might be issues. Please always keep in mind that this is not an officially supported platform and there might be compatibility issues.

In vSphere 7.0, there are ups and downs with consumer-grade network adapters. Since the deprecation of VMKlinux drivers, there is no option to use Realtek-based NICs, and previous versions had problems with the ne1000 driver. Luckily there is the great Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling that adds support for a bunch of network cards and VMKUSB-NIC-FLING always covers your back.

I've updated my NUC portfolio to check which NUCs are safe to update and what considerations you have to take before installing the update. Additionally, I'm taking a look at the consequences of the recently deprecated USB/SD-Card usage for ESXi Installations and some general Issues in 7.0u3.

VMware NSX-T 3.1 Edge Node Sizing

by Florian Grehl
November 10, 2021November 10, 2021
3 Comments

Edge Nodes in NSX-T 3.1 are available as Virtual Machines and Bare Metal Edges. When you deploy a Virtual Edge Node using the embedded deployment function in NSX-T, you can choose between 4 sizes - Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large. In this article, I'm trying to collect information about the different sizing options, what they are intended for and how to resize Edge Nodes.

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